Susan Cohen

Earlier this month Dr. Susan Cohen, a new faculty member in the management department at the Robins School of Business, traveled to South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas to release the 2013 seed accelerator rankings. Cohen co-directs the annual rankings with Dr. Yael Hochberg of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.

According to Cohen, “a seed accelerator is a fixed-term, cohort-based entrepreneurship education program that includes mentorship and educational components and culminates in a public pitch event or demo day.” She explained, “Each session lasts about three months, and cohorts range from a dozen to over one hundred startup teams who go through programs simultaneously. Following a highly competitive application process, an accepted startup usually receives a seed investment. At the end of the program, the startup pitches its business to potential investors in a demo day event.”

In order to be considered for the rankings project, programs must meet the definition of an accelerator, have graduated at least one cohort by 2013 and have at least 10 graduates.  The accelerator must also be based in the U.S. and take an equity stake in the participating startups.

Based on multiple metrics including valuations and the amount of funds raised and investors’ and graduates’ assessments of the programs, Cohen and Hochberg ranked Y Combinator, Techstars and AngelPad as the top three accelerators nationally. These were followed in the rankings by Launchpad LA, MuckerLab, AlphaLab, Capital Innovators, Tech Wildcatters, SURGE Accelerator and The Brandery. Rounding out the top 15 were Betaspring, BoomStartup, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Jumpstart Foundry and DreamIt Ventures.

With the number of programs skyrocketing since the first seed accelerator was founded in 2005, Cohen and Hochberg understood the need to provide guidance on the multitude of program options available to entrepreneurs.

“There is very little public information on the programs’ efficacy. Our goal for the seed accelerator rankings project is to provide transparency around the programs to help entrepreneurs decide whether a seed accelerator is the right choice for them, and if so, which is the best fit,” Cohen revealed. She and Hochberg collected confidential data directly from programs, and supplemented it with data from Crunchbase and other public sources.

While pursuing her doctoral degree in strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Cohen began to see news of seed accelerators appear in various Internet industry trade magazines. “I was fascinated by the premise of entrepreneurship education because one of the core questions in entrepreneurship research is whether or not it can be taught and learned, and here was this new model for entrepreneurship education that seemed to be working, yet there was no research on it.” Ultimately Cohen chose seed accelerators as her dissertation topic.

Cohen is no stranger to the Internet and startup industries. As a member of the founding team of Priceline.com and a former Vice President at Yoyodyne, Cohen has long been at the forefront of the startup world. Today she is a pioneer in research on seed accelerators. Cohen’s research has been presented in Seattle, Orlando, Israel, England and Philadelphia. Her work has been referenced in The Economist, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine and The Huffington Post. 

More details on the rankings project can be found at www.seedrankings.com